Monday, November 2, 2009

Obama Disses Women

I tried very hard to let this manifestation of radical feminist nonsense die a natural death. But the story is just too funny, too ludicrous, and too screwed-up for me to resist the chance to take a couple of jabs at this latest manifestation of political correctness and the ongoing war of the sexes.

Barack Obama is the most metrosexual president since, well, ever. In order to prove he is in touch with his feminine side, he even throws out game-opening baseball pitches in his Calvin Klein jeans. He is to masculinity what Andrew Jackson was to femininity. Which is to say, the exact opposite. He is photographed wearing his speedos for the cover of Time (or Men's Health, or the Gay Advocate, I'm not sure which). But he does seem to have a certain affinity for basketball, and that has brought him the condemnation of two major forces of reasonableness--Maureen Dowd of the New York Times (an obscure publication forced on local New York City residents) and the National Organization for Women (an organization devoted to fish riding bicycles).

And what has caused this ire? Simple. He plays basketball only with his male friends and invitees. How rude. And what's worse, he hosted a "high-level basketball game with no female players." It was indicative of the unease felt by some unnamed women on the White House staff who feel uncomfortable around all those, ick, men. The big game was just the frosting on the cake for these unhappy women. They're uncomfortable because Obama always has too many men and too few women surrounding him.

One of the ladies told Dowd: "Without wanting to sound publicly critical of the president, still the 'sports-fan thing at the White House' could become annoying and that her relative indifference to athletics could be mildly alienating." Dowd further editorializes: "Sports bonding can afford a point of entree with the boss." An entree that this particular lady feels will be denied to her.

Anybody, male or female, born after about 1965 simply accepts that men and women are equal under the law. Only radical feminists and those looking for sexual harassment suits think that men and women are the same. What, precisely do the gals on the White House staff expect of Obama? Should he give up his love of basketball? Take up knitting to be more inclusive? Invite the ladies to join him on the court to shoot a few hoops?

Marriage and gender-relations expert Dowd opines: "Men have always craved private realms--the golf club, men's club, workshop, shed; a place to get away from the chatter and clatter of women and kids." For a woman who has never been married and can't seem to hold onto a man (she's complained about it many times in her columns), she certainly seemed to sum up my feelings about the matter very well. Having discovered a truism which destroyed her original thesis, and realizing that it means that male bonding doesn't equate to woman-demeaning, she wandered off the reservation and started making up stories about W. telling off-color jokes in the White House. Not only is there no proof of that whatsoever, but it doesn't have a damned thing to do with the thesis that men must give attention to women that is both equal and the same.

Finally, in a fit of honesty, Dowd at last admits that she couldn't care less about the overly-sensitive female White House staffers. What really irks her is that her colleague Tom Friedman was invited to play golf with the president in September. And all she wants is an equal chance to play Scrabble with the president. "Since the president is finally willing to let women in on the games, I offered up my own challenge, Scrabble." Then she proceeded to relate some gender jokes about words that start with X and Y to prove she could successfully challenge "the smarty-pants Y chief executive." Hell hath no fury, etc.

Meanwhile, back at the nest, NOW realizes that the battles of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin proved nothing about the continuously-improving status of women. New NOW President Terry O'Neill says "we may all have been fooled." The reports on Obama's basketball male chauvinism appearing on ABC and a bevy of cable news stations triggered O'Neill into calling the the situation "a sign of segregation in the workplace."

Her hysterical screed went on to make this as bad as Jim Crow ever was. "Relationships get built in those more informal settings, and the relationships have a huge impact on the influence an individual has. We know what happens when we segregate whether it is by race or whether it is by gender--you end up with first class citizens and you end up with second class citizens. We need to see the White House leading the way for desegregating the workplaces all over the country and it is troubling."

So I guess that means that all those high-ranking female White House women were reduced to the level of maids and courtesans when they weren't invited to play basketball with the president. But wait, there's more. "It's extremely important now especially for the president to have as many women as men in his closest circle of advisors. If women had been at the heads of the companies on Wall Street instead fo these masters of the universe then we might not be in the predicament that we're in today."

Now there's a leap. For an organization that purports to believe in gender equality, it seems their president doesn't want equality (it's a ruse to get to the real thing--superiority). She jumps from non-basketball playing exclusion of women to women being the salvation of American economics without so much as a logical segue.

I don't have a solution to this intractable problem of men behaving like men to the exclusion of women behaving like men. Perhaps we should see what Don Imus has to say about the whole thing. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is leaking credibility on all fronts like a sieve. His policies are failing, his poll numbers are plummeting, and the world is a more dangerous place today than it was before he became president. Even I will give him credit for not noticing he was excluding women from the important state issue of basketball.

23 comments:

HamiltonsGhost said...

Lawhawk--I haven't been following the Obama athletic accomplishments much. Does he at least invite the ladies along on his golf trips?

Unknown said...

HamiltonsGhost: I haven't checked that out. Maybe he lets them carry the bags. I was thinking that if I had to get out on the basketball court with an Obama, I'd be less afraid to take on Barack than Michelle. He may be missing a big bet here.

Unknown said...

It seems to me that I'd rather put Dowd on the basketball court than have to sit down to play scrabble with her. At least on the court, you could get away from her incessant chattering.

AndrewPrice said...

Live by the interest group, die by the interest group. Now he needs to placate the feminist lobby. What a shame.

You know. . .

I wonder if they used a union manufactured ball? And shouldn't he switch to soccer to honor our South American friends who have come to visit without documentation. And, while we're at it, I'm not seeing anybody in a wheelchair -- or anyone without arms. . . or anyone who is gay, or anyone who hates basketball!

Wow, what a non-inclusive ass. . . what a divider, not a united. Stop your hating Mr. Obama, stop your hate.

Unknown said...

CalFederalist: I think Dowd considers herself a feminist, but her incoherent writing often leaves the reader very confused. Her philosophy seems to be "I am equal to men, I just wish I could catch one."

Unknown said...

Andrew: Hilarious! Obama has succeeded in bringing out all those nuanced grievance groups that we haven't seen before. As for the basketball, "short people got no reason to live."

BevfromNYC said...

HamiltonGhost: After being called out on this issue, he invited one of his female advisors who apparently is also a top notch golfer to play with him last week. THIS he will listen to, spending us into oblivion, no.

LawHawk: It's women like Dowd and O'Neill that made me leave the Women's movement behind years ago. I despise this stupid argument that the glass ceiling will never be shattered because men bond on the golf course, tennis court, or hunting or whatever. My favorite excuse I heard was "I will never get ahead because men make deals in the Men's room". Why is it that these women think they don't have play the game to succeed just like the men do. Not every man makes it to the top level either. Learn to compete like the men do. If it's golf, learn to freakin' play golf!
And don't get me started about Shannon Faulkner and her fight to get into VMI...

Phew, okay, that felt good even if it was slightly off topic. I am now done with my post feminist rant for the day.

Suzie1 said...

Dowd. I'm sure she is all for equality for everyone! She probably has lunch with her trashman and goes to the theater with her maid.

BevfromNYC said...

Andrew: LOL! I'm sure Rahm is out scouting a wheelchair bound gay one-armed transgendered female soccer player to play in his next basketball game as we speak. Then he'll cover all the bases. If she were blind at least in one eye, it wouldn't hurt either.

Unknown said...

Bev: Bravo! I've spent my entire life around strong women (intellectually, mentally and many physically). They all shared one trait: they didn't whine. And yet they were all feminine. None of them thought they had to do all the things the guys did in order to compete. That's what I call a feminist. They knew the difference between being "equal" and being "the same."

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, LOL! Nice rant.

You make a great point in the flaw in the feminist logic about getting ahead. They look at the exclusive things that men at the top (the guys in the secret frats) do to help each other out, and they assume that this is something that all men do to exclude them.

The reality is that these are things an "elite" few do to exclude 99.9% of the rest of us -- male, female or other. This isn't some plot to keep women out, it's a plot to help their friends and keep out the riff raff.

And if you're a woman and you happen to be in that elite club (and there are many such women), rather than cutting the deal in the mensroom, they will cut the deal with you at the upscale restaurant.

Basically, they're attributing sexism to something that is not sexist, it's just elitist.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, LOL! I wish Rahm luck -- seriuosly! I'd love to see Obama commit a major technical foul against this person. . . imagine the image of Obama planting his foot on his(her)(its) head on the way to a layup!

Joel Farnham said...

LawHawk,

I had thought this had died a dishonorable death. Sheeesh!!!

I wonder what the Equality Czar thinks of this.

StanH said...

I do enjoy watching liberals being beaten with their own club. They set up this phony world, that human beings can’t live in, and the result is comedy, or the perfect object study in the lunacy that is liberalism.

BevfromNYC said...

StanH: This is the Libs way of clubbing O with a wink, so they can prove they are NOT bias.

"See, Fox News, we're being really, really hard on Obama for being a sexist, but we are also superior because we understand that he needs his Man-space. We won't allow something like this in Augusta, but we will in the Whitehouse just this once, or twice. Oh, he's just so darn cute..."

BevfromNYC said...

Joel, The Equality Czar' is still stuck at the beginning just trying to find a more gender-neutral title. "Czar" is such a sexist male oriented title evoking the image of a white male imperialistic and over-dominating tyrant.

Unknown said...

Suzie1: If she's spending all her time hanging out with her fellow journalists, the pool of men that anyone would want is necessarily very small. At least the trashman would probably have something interesting to say. Ditto for the maid. LOL

Unknown said...

JoelFarnham: As long as the oppressed minority is also a leftist, she deserves special protection. I'm sure the equality czar will take care of that. And as long as there's a Democratic Party, there will always be aggrieved victim groups.

Unknown said...

StanH: As they say, history repeats itself--first as tragedy, then as comedy.

Unknown said...

Bev: Nice summary of faux indignation. And probably a very good analysis of the feminist attitude toward Obama. At least he doesn't require them to provide oral sex (as far as I know).

Writer X said...

Can't we all just get along?

Seriously, this is rich. Dowd doesn't have anything else to write about? It doesn't matter that he's dithering on the basketball court and not running the country effectively. But because he's not going one-on-one with a woman?

Watching mothers eat their young. This is what we're watching. Couldn't be happening to a more deserving bunch!

Unknown said...

WriterX: If we could all just get along, we wouldn't need the Democrats to force us to get along whether we like it or not.

Dowd is to journalism as Obama is to executive leadership. Damned little connection in either case.

Tennessee Jed said...

You guys all covered this pretty well other than for me to mention I never have held much sway over much of the N.O.W. feminist garbage. Bev put it very nicely. There is too much looking for things over which they can be confrontational. I see this in those who are always looking to make race an issue for some specific gain.

Not only is a cigar sometimes just a cigar, but sometimes a loser is just a loser, Ms. Dowd.

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